


Twenty-Year Men

by TempleCloud



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Missing Scene, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24931828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempleCloud/pseuds/TempleCloud
Summary: Two severely messed-up middle-aged ex-soldiers try to deal with life after the Escobar War.
Relationships: Aral Vorkosigan & Piotr Vorkosigan, Konstantin Bothari & Aral Vorkosigan
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Twenty-Year Men

**Author's Note:**

> “To be a count’s sworn Armsman – it’s an honor. Only twenty places to fill. They take the best, they take the bloody heroes, the men with medals, the twenty-year men with perfect records. If what I did – at Escobar – was so bad, why did the Admiral make Count Piotr make a place for me? And if I was such a bloody hero, why did they take away my memory of it?”

‘Father, I’ve been thinking we could do with some more Armsmen who are nearer forty than sixty. At the moment, Esterhazy’s the only one in that category. And one of my soldiers from the _General Vorkraft_ is about to retire from the Service – a twenty-year man…’ Well, twenty-six years, to be precise. On the other hand, that’s including time spent in the brig, or in the psychiatric department of the ImpMil hospital.

‘Hmph. Good military record?’

‘For most of his career, very good indeed. Excellent marks in basic training, commendations for extreme courage and resourcefulness in battle…’ This is all entirely true. I’ve checked the records. Whatever underlying problems Bothari had, when he was younger he clearly didn’t just manage to hold them in check, but absolutely thrived on army life. Until he was transferred to Ges Vorrutyer’s command.

‘For _most_ of his career? Come on, boy, what happened?’

‘He – went through rather a sticky patch when he was Ges Vorrutyer’s batman. He didn’t exactly take to Ges.’ Which is putting it mildly – but I really don’t want to have to explain about the berserker rages, about all that pent-up anger bursting out at innocent bystanders, as though he was one of those mutant sorcerers in the stories who have to shed chaos periodically by killing something or someone. 

‘I’m starting to warm to him already. Unless – he’s not one of these radicals who hates all Vor, is he?’

‘He’s not exactly keen on the class, but he’s loyal. He saved my life in that mutiny just before the Escobar war. He was sensible about it, too – instead of openly defying the mutineers, which could well just have got him shot and not achieved anything, he pretended to side with them, asked for the honour of killing me himself, stunned me and hid me away, and went and reported to my first officer what he’d done.’ 

There’s no need to mention that First Officer Gottyan had decided by this point that he liked the idea of being captain, and so _he_ tried to kill me, and that the only reason I survived was because of a Betan prisoner stunning Gottyan. Too many complications. My past life is complicated, no matter how much I try to reduce my life now to the simple project of drinking myself to death. Trying to stop myself thinking about Cordelia…

My father looks at me sharply. ‘You seem to think a lot of this soldier of yours. You’re not in love again, are you?’

‘How did you…?’ my brain catches up with my mouth, as I realise the track my father’s mind had been running along. ‘No, not with Sergeant Bothari – the soldier I was telling you about. He’s really not my type, and anyway, he’s heterosexual. No, it’s just that he’s a good soldier, and I don’t want him to be – wasted.’

‘What do you mean, wasted? If he’s so good, why does he want to leave?’

I could make some excuse, say something like, ‘Well, his first child has recently been born, so he’d prefer to be around to watch her grow up, instead of off on ship duty. Which wouldn’t be a lie, but wouldn’t be the whole truth, either. If I don’t tell the full truth, and my father realises that there is something badly wrong with his new armsman that I didn’t warn him about, he’s going to react as if I’ve sold him a spavined horse. On the other hand, if I tell him everything… Bothari rises or sinks to people’s expectations of him. He has to be able to start off in this new job knowing that we think he’s worthy to be an armsman. How do I put this tactfully?

‘It’s not exactly voluntary. He’s being medically discharged.’

My father’s eyes narrow. ‘This isn’t the fellow who got shot with a nerve disruptor, is it?’

‘No, Ensign Koudelka won’t be discharged for a few months yet.’ But when he is, he’s going to be facing the same situation that Sergeant Bothari faces now. At least Koudelka doesn’t have children, and does have parents who presumably can give him somewhere to stay, while he looks for a job. (I only know this because of the ‘Next of kin to contact in case of death’ section on his files – he’s just as cagey about discussing his background as Bothari.) But on the other hand, Koudelka is going to be in more danger of being mutie-bashed, because his problems are so much more visible than Bothari’s, and because he can’t defend himself. What a planet. No wonder Cordelia didn’t want to come here.

‘So, what is wrong with him, then? This isn’t a home for cripples!’

‘Well, “medical discharge” is a bit of a cover story, really. Sergeant Bothari’s role in the recent war was so tightly classified that even he isn’t allowed to know about it, so he was ordered to have memory-suppression therapy afterwards. I can’t talk about the details, but Barrayar has a lot to be grateful to him for. Frankly, he showed a lot more courage than I did.’

‘You didn’t do badly, boy. It’s not your fault the conquest failed. You did the best job anyone could have, under the circumstances.’

‘I did my job. Sergeant Bothari did more than anyone would have expected of him.’ I went along with what I knew was an unjust war that would cost huge numbers of lives, because the Emperor convinced me that it was the only way to get rid of Prince Serg and the entire War Party without provoking a civil war. In other words, I followed orders that I knew were wrong. Whereas Bothari, for whom following orders is a lifeline, rebelled in order to save an enemy prisoner. Not even because he understood that there’s anything wrong with abusing prisoners, but because he knew _I_ wouldn’t want this prisoner to be harmed.

‘Not one of these mavericks who always think they know better than their commander, is he?’

‘No, not really. Generally, he’s a natural follower – someone who feels more comfortable if there are clear rules, and orders to follow, and someone in charge whom he can respect. But when there’s an unexpected situation, like when my Political Officer tried to kill me – well, he’s brighter than he looks,’ (which admittedly isn’t saying much), ‘and he can use his initiative where necessary.’

‘Hmm. And apart from this memory-suppression business, is he healthy? Sound in wind and limb?’

‘He’s very strong and athletic – a martial arts expert. But, well, at the moment he’s still recovering from the memory-supression therapy, and it has some fairly nasty side-effects. They should pass off soon, apparently, but in the meantime he might need the odd day’s sick leave, and he might come across as a bit strange.’ (Just please, please don’t ask me whether he was sane before all this.) ‘I expect he’ll be fine once he’s settled in.’ (Or I hope so, at any rate.)

* * *

I had forced myself to visit him in hospital, once he was allowed visitors. I wasn’t sure he’d particularly want to see me. After all, if he was lucid enough to think about it at all, he must have realised that I was the one who’d signed authorisation to hand him over to the ImpMil therapists, and he had no way of knowing that I’d done that because the alternative was letting him be court-martialled and shot for murdering his commanding officer. Yet another compromise I’ve made, yet another reason to feel disgusted with myself for betraying someone who should be able to trust me. But if getting angry with me for betraying him gave him the will to live, it would be worth it. It wasn’t as though he had any friends or family who might come and visit.

At first, I wasn’t sure if he even realised I was there. He was strapped to a bed, and sedated. I couldn’t be sure whether he was awake or not, but I talked anyway, the way I might to someone who was physically wounded and in a coma. After a while, I found myself saying, ‘Maybe the most nearly worthwhile thing I’m doing these days is visiting people in hospital. You, and Ensign Koudelka, and seventeen babies in uterine replicators. The replicator babies don’t talk much, either. One of them’s yours, did you know that? Your daughter.’

That caught his attention, at any rate. He snapped alert, or as alert as he could manage when smothered under a thick layer of tranquilliser. ‘Half… half-Betan?’

‘No, half-Escobaran.’

‘Oh.’ Silence, as he tried to process this while barely awake, and in pain. After a few minutes, he managed to say the word, ‘Elena.’ Then more silence, while he registered through the fog of drugs that he’d admitted to remembering something, before he managed to amend this to, ‘My daughter. Going to call her Elena.’

He wasn’t able to say anything more that day, only whimper and cry, and struggle against the restraints as if he wanted to be able to curl up into a ball and shut out everything. I think he was crying more from physical pain than from grief or guilt, but I’d never seen him cry like that before. Mutter, yes, or rage against the demon voices that kept taunting him, or shoot at enemies who were invisible except to him, but not cry like a child, not like that. He has the highest pain threshold of anyone I know, and there have been lots of times when I’ve seen him, wounded in battle, just slap a temporary dressing on the wound to make sure he doesn’t pass out from loss of blood while he’s sorting out the rest of the wounded. 

What must they be doing to him, I wondered? If he kept on fighting to hold onto his memories, would the therapists just give him higher and higher doses of the drugs, possibly until they killed him? If so, wouldn’t it have been more merciful just not to resuscitate him, when Cordelia and I nearly killed him with an overdose of sedative, during the war?

I could picture – well, no, I could remember – Cordelia’s response to that sort of suggestion: ‘ _It must be like living among cannibals, to be a Barrayaran._ ’ I remember her refusal to give up – ‘ _you can either leave us both or kill us both,_ ’ – even in defending a man so badly injured that, if she managed to bring him safely back to Beta Colony, he had no prospect of being anything but a helpless invalid for the next hundred years. At least Bothari had a better chance than _that_.

And I remembered Bothari himself, tricking Ges Vorrutyer into handing that Escobaran prisoner over to him, so that he could treat her wounds and try to nurse her back to health. I’d already concluded that there was nothing I could do for her – she was injured, probably dying, Ges outranked me since my demotion so there was nothing I could do to control him, what was one more life in the vast crime that was the Escobar War, all I could do was vow to kill him if he ever tried anything like that again, etc. Bothari just refused to let any of that stop him. And yes, I know that he repeatedly raped that young woman, and that if she remembers any of what happened, she’s cursing him. But she doesn’t know that if it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t even be alive to curse him.

And I remembered my father telling me that the reason we – meaning, of course, his generation – finally beat the Cetagandans is that we don’t know when to quit. Well, I know how to quit. I’ve given up on myself, at any rate. But I mustn’t give up on people I’m responsible for.

ImpMil refused to let me visit Bothari again for another month. They were awkward about it, as if they weren’t sure how to say no to a count’s heir, but quite implacable. By the time I did get a chance to see Bothari again, he was looking much better. We even found time for a wrestling bout, in an unoccupied exercise room, with a ward orderly as referee. The orderly looked uneasy when we suggested this, and drew me aside to whisper, ‘Sir, you do realise this man has killed one Vor admiral in recent months, don’t you? What’s to stop him killing another?’

I was feeling so sick of my whole life that I was tempted to do without a referee and take my chances on whether Bothari killed me or not (probably not deliberately, but just because when he’s in berserker mode, it wouldn’t occur to him to stop throttling an opponent just because that opponent has lost consciousness). But it wouldn’t be fair to do that to him, when he’s in enough trouble already. So instead, I just said to the orderly, ‘That’s why we need you there.’

I had wondered whether Bothari’s reactions would be slowed down by whatever assortment of medicines he was being made to take. Possibly they were, but he still pinned me expertly, twice in succession. ‘You’ve not been practising,’ he said to me, accusingly.

‘No, well, having you as an opponent does tend to sharpen my survival instinct,’ I said. I was bruised, exhausted, and feeling more cheerful than I had for a long time.

Afterwards, he asked me, as if picking up the conversation from where we had left off a month earlier, ‘What’s going to happen to Elena?’ It took me a moment to realise that he meant the baby, and not her mother.

‘It looks as though all the babies are going to have to go to the Imperial Orphanage,’ I said. ‘I suppose at least they’ll have each other for company.’ I had spent the last few times that I had been sober tracking down the fathers of the other babies. Three of these men were already dead: one by Bothari’s hand and one by mine, and the third killed by my efforts, even if I hadn’t actually forced him into anything he didn’t want to do anyway. The others, mainly officers, fell into two categories: those who were single and didn’t want the responsibility of parenthood, and those who were married and didn’t want to have to confess to their wives. I had managed to persuade all of them to make ‘charitable donations’ to the orphanage, and it wasn’t as if their children were missing much by growing up not knowing them.

‘No, sir,’ Bothari said. ‘She’s not an orphan. She’s got me. Let me look after her. When I get out of here, I’m going to find a job, and I’m going to find someone good to look after her while I’m working. I’m going to teach her to fight, as soon as she’s old enough to walk. No-one’s going to give her any trouble. If anyone tries anything, they’ll have me to deal with.’

This was the longest speech I’d heard him make in a long time. He looked – not exactly excited, or not in the sense that he gets excited about killing people, but – resolute. Like a decent, grown-up human being facing up to his responsibilities. The way the fathers of the other babies weren’t. And the way I wasn’t.

‘What sort of job are you planning to look for?’ I asked.

‘I don’t mind. Anything.’

I suspected that this didn’t mean ‘anything morally and legally permissible’, but literally _anything_. For someone with no formal qualifications, discharged from the Imperial Service under mysterious circumstances, that could all too easily mean resorting to crime to survive, and being caught and executed, or just shot by the Municipal Guard…

‘Wait a while,’ I said. ‘If I have a word with my father and recommend you as one of his armsmen, would that help?’

He stared at me, trying to work out whether I was serious. ‘Why would you want someone like me as an armsman?’

‘I owe you my life – from the mutiny on that newly-discovered planet. I don’t know whether you remember that?’

‘Yes.’

* * *

And now, it’s arranged. My father is going to interview him for the job as soon as he’s discharged from the ImpMil hospital (since, if he can move in straightaway, it lessens the chances of his celebrating being released by going off and getting into a fight with someone). I’m going to fly over in the morning to collect him. He’s being released on Friday, which I had scheduled as a day for drinking myself senseless. But no-one should have to deal with that, on his first day in a new job. I’ll try to survive two days of sobriety, and get drunk on Saturday instead.

Under the circumstances, it’s the least I can do.


End file.
